Episode 881: The Big Unit's Perplexing Punctuation
Date May 11, 2016 Summary Ben and Sam banter about Bartolo Colon’s likeability, then answer listener emails about Colon, Randy Johnson, the Cubs, prescient managers and more. Topics * Players lying about their age * Ryan Howard's success against the Marlins * Chicago Cubs' offensive success in 2016 * No plate appearance pinch hitters * Randy Johnson's website punctuation * Hypothetical clairvoyant MLB manager Intro The Kinks, "Life on the Road" Outro Wilco, "Capitol City" Banter * Ben is in Washington, D.C. for an event promoting The Only Rule Is It Has to Work. * The podcast Hang Up and Listen recently talked about why people like Bartolo Colon. They think, and Sam agrees, that it is largely because Colon is fat. Sam thinks people should feel more guilt over this. Email Questions * Sam: "The Mets' broadcast pointed out that Bartolo has set the record for oldest player at the time of hitting his first career home run. This made me wonder; say you are a player from some remote location and you lie about your age in order to sign with a MLB team, pretending to be three years younger than you actually are. Note that I don't hold it against players who do stuff like that. Say you then have an outstanding career, probably short of the Hall of Fame, but you're still reasonably productive at what people think is your age 40 season. Being a productive 40 year old is pretty cool but being a productive 43 year old is amazing. My question is do you spill the beans or does noone ever know that you might be the best mid 40s player ever?" * Danny: "This is on one hand a dumb but on the other hand it's kind of an amazing situation. On the Marlins' broadcast a few nights ago while Ryan Howard was at the plate they said he had hit 39 career home runs against the Marlins which is 2nd all-time to Chipper Jones' 40 home runs against the Marlins. By the end of the 2011 season Howard had played essentially 6.5 seasons for the Phillies and had hit 34 home runs against the Marlins. Naturally Ruben Amaro then gave him $125 million to hit home runs against the Marlins for another five years. Ryan Howard has hit five home runs against the Marlins since then. In his defense, Chipper Jones has hit zero home runs against the Marlins over the same period. Anyway, this is the last year of Howard's contract assuming the Phillies don't exercise the option for next year, and they have 17 more games scheduled against Miami. He has maybe 60 more opportunities to hit two home runs. Are you betting that Ryan Howard does or does not break Chipper Jones' record?" * Kevin: "How many runs would the Cubs have to spot their opponents to be a .500 team going forward? Meaning instead of 0-0 the score starts at Opposition (X) and Cubs (0)." * Daniel: "I was recently showing a friend Randy Johnson's brilliant logo/watermark for his post-playing career as a photographer when I noticed how oddly punctuated Johnson's bio is on his site. There appears to be no spacing after the punctuation although the trend is not consistent. Is Randy Johnson the punctual forebearer to Mike Trout's own odd punctuation style? What do you think happened here?" * Kyle: "You're a manager for a MLB team. You are partially clairvoyant, allowing you to look into the future and foresee every major hot and cold streak for your players. For example you know exactly when your 6 WAR superstar is going to be mired in a 2-20 slump and when your backup catcher will hit four homers in 16 plate appearances. Do you take advantage of this superpower by sitting your superstars for a week at a time and playing the hottest bench player in his stead, or do you try to compromise for fear of the public backlash when you bench your superstar after a hot streak?" Play Index * Sam uses the Play Index to look up players that he calls NoPAPHs. This stands for No Plate Appearance Pinch Hitter, a player who is called in to pinch hit and then taken out when a new pitcher is put in. * During the 1980s and 1990s there were regularly over 100 NoPAPH appearances each season. * Dave Hansen is the all-time NoPAPH leader with 63 NoPAPH appearances. The active leader is David Ross, who has 6. Notes * Sam thinks fans are very forgiving of players who lie about their age, particularly later in their careers. * Ben does not think Ryan Howard will hit two more home runs against the Marlins, Sam thinks he will. * Ben and Sam think you could spot the Cubs' opponents 2 runs and they would still be a .500 team. * Ben jokes that reading Randy Johnson's website is like reading Flowers for Algernon. Johnson's usage of punctuation and spacing improves in the middle of the text but then fades again. Links * Effectively Wild Episode 881: The Big Unit's Perplexing Punctuation * Randy Johnson Photography * How Many Runs Could the Cubs Spot Their Opponents? by Sam Miller * The Disappearing Footnote by Sam Miller Category:Episodes Category:Email Episodes